Facebook Wanted Banks To Fork Over Customer Data Passing Through Messenger (theverge.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: For years, Facebook has publicly positioned its Messenger application as a way to connect with friends and as a way to help customers interact directly with businesses. But a new report from The Wall Street Journal today indicates that Facebook also saw its Messenger platform as a siphon for the sensitive financial data of its users, information it would not otherwise have access to unless a customer interacted with, say, a banking institution over chat. In this case, the WSJ report says not only did the banks find Facebook's methods obtrusive, but the companies also pushed back against the social network and, in some cases, moved conversations off Messenger to avoid handing Facebook any sensitive data. Among the financial firms Facebook is said to have argued with about customer data are American Express, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
The report says Facebook was interested in helping banks create bots for its Messenger platform, as part of a big push in 2016 to turn the chat app into an automated hub of digital life that could help you solve problems and avoid cumbersome customer service calls. But some of these bots, like the one American Express developed for Messenger last year, deliberately avoided sending transaction information over the platform after Facebook made clear it wanted to use customer spending habits as part of its ad targeting business. In some cases, companies like PayPal and Western Union negotiated special contracts that would let them offer many detailed and useful services like money transfers, the WSJ reports. But by and large, big banks in the U.S. have reportedly shied away from working with Facebook due to how aggressively it pushed for access to customer data. Facebook said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: "Like many online companies, we partner with financial institutions to improve people's commerce experiences, like enabling better customer service, and people opt into these experiences. We've emphasized to partners that keeping people's information safe and secure is critical to these efforts. That has been and always will be our priority."
The report says Facebook was interested in helping banks create bots for its Messenger platform, as part of a big push in 2016 to turn the chat app into an automated hub of digital life that could help you solve problems and avoid cumbersome customer service calls. But some of these bots, like the one American Express developed for Messenger last year, deliberately avoided sending transaction information over the platform after Facebook made clear it wanted to use customer spending habits as part of its ad targeting business. In some cases, companies like PayPal and Western Union negotiated special contracts that would let them offer many detailed and useful services like money transfers, the WSJ reports. But by and large, big banks in the U.S. have reportedly shied away from working with Facebook due to how aggressively it pushed for access to customer data. Facebook said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: "Like many online companies, we partner with financial institutions to improve people's commerce experiences, like enabling better customer service, and people opt into these experiences. We've emphasized to partners that keeping people's information safe and secure is critical to these efforts. That has been and always will be our priority."
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They know exactly when and where it happened because it is burned in their brains.
Except the scientific study of trauma suggests that this isn't how trauma memory works:
you can start here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Now a naive reading of this particular article might be that the alleged trauma victim here is making things up, but the reference in the article to 'memory amplification' of trauma, relies of course, on there being a trauma to begin with!
So while I'm certain you do know a statistically s
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And the heading of that link: "CNN: Ford refuses to testify until after an FBI investigation of alleged assault"
You are just a uninformed fucking idiot.
Freedom is Slavery. (Score:1)
"Using customer spending habits as part of its ad targeting business" is utterly incompatible with "improving people's commerce experiences".
However, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" so I don't expect Facebook to catch on to this fact.
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> any politician opposing Facebook can say goodbye to any chance of being elected.
Donal says "Hi"
"Hasn't Opted Out" is Not The Same As "Opt-in" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Opt-in," my pasty white ass.
There are a shit-ton of "experiences" on Facebook that I haven't "opted in" to. Indeed, when I try to turn them off, Facebook turns them right back on again (most notably "Most Recent" versus "Top Stories", and "Login via profile picture"). Facebook should be trusted with precisely nothing.
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His examples are less like going back to an abusive husband and more like, "Meh, he forgot to wash the dishes again. I'll just do it myself."
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Easy to say for people who seem to think that email and telephones no longer function because OMG FACEBOOK.
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This describes my Facebook use exactly, I post nothing. I go on the site only when I need to interact with a couple of clubs I am a member of which use FB as their method of direct member engagement, or very occasionally to "like" performers I want to boost. And it has allowed me to get some current links to people I knew in college that I had lost touch with. But I contact them directly through email.
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"most recent'"
https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h... [facebook.com] on your desktop. Your mobile app is virtually out of your own control, rotsa ruck there.
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Indeed, it amounts to a statement of illegal intent.
Re:"Hasn't Opted Out" is Not The Same As "Opt-in" (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a shit-ton of "experiences" on Facebook that I haven't "opted in" to. Indeed, when I try to turn them off, Facebook turns them right back on again (most notably "Most Recent" versus "Top Stories", and "Login via profile picture"). Facebook should be trusted with precisely nothing.
You're quite right. And it's even worse. While I like Facebook in that it's a good way to be able to contact distant friends and relatives from time to time and sometimes people I know do actually post interesting things there, I really wonder what exactly Zuckerberg is thinking. Facebook has become a lot less user friendly, and it's get worse all the time. Now, if you start to write up a post and change your mind, too bad. You can change the contents but you can't not post something. If you don't click to post it once you start writing, it will just basically hang there forever. In the past you could start writing something, change your mind, and get rid of it. Not any more. Another problem is cutting and pasting. Myself and a few other people have had problems where a cut and paste attempt failed to overwrite something previously in the buffer on the PC and when we pasted into Facebook, something we didn't want to paste got there. And you can't remove it if it's a link. So I had a link to something about a Disney film in a post that had nothing to do with Disney or movies because I had previously copied the link to put in an email I sent and my attempt to cut and paste something different into the buffer to use in my Facebook post failed. I don't get how not letting you undo stuff is making the whole experience better, Zuckerberg.
For the subject at hand, I don't really understand why people would want to contacts banks and credit card companies from within Facebook and then expect that Facebook won't try to get their info. I didn't think it required an extraordinary IQ to realize that anything you do in Facebook is subject to Facebook knowing about it. Maybe people are just a lot stupider than I realized.
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You are force to write things on another tool (like a word processor or text editor) and then when you are done you cut and paste in the finished product. Many messenger/chat features on other platforms are annoyingly misfeatured also (messenging in LinkedIn for example).
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This is exactly why I haven't signed up for Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or any other non-banking financial ANYTHING. I don't even like PayPal - considering they refused to investigate fraud committed on a stolen credit card and fake account.
I'll stick with my tried-and-true banks and credit unions, thanks.
Facebook == Ultra Middleman (Score:5, Insightful)
They really are sickos at facebook, they wanted to become the ultra middle men, between all customers and all suppliers. Not honest ones either but lying to both to maximise the middle man cut, either end getting shit, whilst they suck up all the profits, total power, total control, nothing but idiot psychopaths temporarily corrupt the human digital medium. You use Facebook and you are part of the problem, you are an idiot, dragging the rest of us with you, you know better, yet you still give away the privacy of everyone you interact with.
This kind of invasion and manipulation of all human social interactions across it's corrupt platform is extremely disturbing and should be investigated and if necessary prosecuted for purposefully causing psychological harm to it's users, duty of care, criminal negligence, fraudulent misrepresentations of the service supplied, in whose interest it was, who benefited and what people lost.
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Don't install an app that sucks-up your contact list, phone number and browsing history: Most entertainment/communication applets do just that. It is well-known that people put freebies before privacy and government wants it like that.
The whole idea of Facebook is "Here I am", which has its uses and the more popular snap-chat and Instagram (owned by Facebook) don't offer that. The problem being that Facebook marketed themselves to teenagers, who didn't put privacy first: It was easy for Facebook to pret
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Among the financial firms Facebook is said to have argued with about customer data are American Express, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
If Wells Fargo had a problem with it, something's definitely hinky.
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Wells Fargo sells it to their subsidiaries, they don't want FB eating their customers lunches before they get the chance.
Still using Facebook (Score:2)
I suppose that those who are still using Facebook don’t care and will accept anything.
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Here on Slashdot, we use "fork" in another way.... (Score:1)
At least we used to...
"fork over" data (meaning to hand over in large quantities, I guess?); who says that?
Now, forking banks, that's an idea...
Double meanings (Score:2)
When I hear "fork Facebook", does that mean split off the code of FB, or is it a variation of a cuss word?
We Need a Federal Opt-Out Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you deleted your Facebook profile yet? (Score:1)
After the first month, the withdrawal symptoms drop off sharply.
To prepare yourself, convert any FB based logins to something else a couple of weeks before you delete your profile.
Then, just suck it up. Maybe edit your hosts file to redirect facebook.com to something else.
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Noo you just summoned APK! You fool!
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Where I work it would not be kickbacks or any form of revenue. It would be question of compliance and customer privacy. They actually do not have enough money for us to trade that for being on the front page of the fishwrap, having thrown our customers under the privacy bus for dollars.
GDPR (Score:4, Interesting)
Welcome Europes privacy law! The rest of the world should follow.
Yup, FB was turned away (Score:3)
By any ethical banking institution they were certainly told 'NO'.
I work at one of those named institutions, and we would most certainly require that FB comply with federal regulations, banking, credit, and consumer protection law, and our own internal policies and standards. This would all be greatly restricted, if indeed ANY banking information would be permitted to be intercepted or shared at all.
And it would be a surprisingly short conversation. We would have required either a full disclosure of data sharing and use, or more likely an agreement in advance to abide by our policies. Violations would result in our leaving the platform.
I'm not at all surprised FB asked. I would be genuinely astonished if we permitted anything beyond that permitted for any other partner or customer.
HELL no (Score:2)
If my bank wants to share my information with Facebook, they will no longer be my bank. Facebook has demonstrated quite clearly that they cannot be trusted with the data they have already amassed.
Zuckerborg can go fuck himself with a rusty chainsaw.
useful post (Score:1)